Non-smokers Pay The Bill

March 31, 1988|The Morning Call

To the Editor:

In response to the letter of March 22 regarding "discrimination" against smokers with proposed legislation to increase cigarette taxes by 16 cents, may I offer some information. In 1985, Jonathan Fielding, M.D., M.P.H. (Master of Public Health), presented the following interesting statistics: (1) The total direct health care costs associated with smoking are over $16 billion annually. (2) Indirect losses from smoking because of lost productivity and earnings from illness, disability and early death are near $37 billion annually.

These costs can be broken down to an annual cost of $200 per American for the care of smokers. Every non-smoker pays an additional $100 per year to provide medical care for smokers through elevated taxes and inflated health care insurance premiums.

Thus, the additional $58 a year a one-pack-per-day smoker will pay from an increased tax is still less than the $300 a year it costs us non-smokers to support someone else's habit. Nicotine addiction is a tough but solvable problem. The financial and health consequences cannot be ignored, however. I can use the $300 in many other ways.